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Using an unusual purchase of 30 minutes of television time, Ross Perot took viewers on a graphic tour of America's faltering economy tonight and asked them to choose a President "who will do it, not just talk about it."

Armed with more than two dozen charts and a metal pointer, Mr. Perot used virtually his entire presentation to dissect the causes of the recession. The independent Presidential candidate heaped scorn on both political parties, contended that government had lost touch with the people, and blamed short-sighted policies for the country's indebtedness.

Throughout the taped presentation, the camera never veered from Mr. Perot, who was seated at a desk backed by a simple bookcase. While conventional campaign advertisements often use poignant visuals or indignant charges to capture attention, Mr. Perot relied on his most dependable political asset -- his gift for plain talk and homespun anecdotes. Solution to Come Later

Government leaders, he said, "assume we are major dumb." In the 1980's, "we were just like little boys playing with money," he said.

Mr. Perot did not discuss his proposed solutions to the country's economic problems, saying he would do that in later presentations. He also encouraged viewers to read his best-selling book, "United We Stand: How We Can Take Back Our Country," (Hyperion) which prescribes a number of harsh deficit-reduction measures.

Mr. Perot's speech, titled "Jobs, Debt and the Washington Mess," appeared from 8 to 8:30 P.M. Eastern Time on CBS, immediately before the opening game of the National League pennant series. It pre-empted "Rescue 911" in most television markets.

The lengthy speech was the first episode in a planned series of Perot television presentations. Since Mr. Perot entered the Presidential race last Thursday, after announcing in July that he would not be a candidate, the public has seen him only on television.

With $380,000 out of his own deep pockets, the Texas billionaire bought 30 minutes of prime time so he could deliver his message without the filter of journalistic analysis.

Presumably to prevent reporters from interpreting Mr. Perot's words before they were heard by the public, Perot campaign officials refused to screen the presentation in advance. They did, however, release a two-minute excerpt to television networks -- just enough to let the networks promote the program on their evening news shows but not enough to enable an advance critique.

Mr. Perot has bought 30 minutes of time on ABC on Friday night at a cost of $620,000 to broadcast a second program. Campaign aides said today that he would begin airing 30-second and 60-second advertisements on Thursday.

All the advertising is being produced by the 270 Group, a Dallas agency formed to run Mr. Perot's media campaign. It is a wholly owned subsidiary of Temerlin McClain, a prominent Irving, Tex., advertising company with clients ranging from American Air Lines to J. C. Penney. Dennis D. McClain, the company's president, said the group now includes about 22 executives, most from Dallas but some from Los Angeles.

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Mr. Perot and his running mate, James B. Stockdale, also plan to participate in a series of four Presidential and Vice Presidential debates that begin on Sunday. The Perot campaign today formally accepted an invitation from the Bush-Quayle and Clinton-Gore campaigns to join the debates. Nearly Unprecedented

Experts on political advertising said it was virtually unprecedented for a Presidential candidate to spend 30 minutes of paid television time speaking directly into the camera. Some questioned whether many viewers had reached for the remote control after the first few minutes of Mr. Perot's speech, particularly given his low ratings in recent polls.

Darrell West, a political scientist at Brown University, predicted that an audience accustomed to conflict and action would find Mr. Perot's format boring. "They're going to tune out," he said.

Although it may seem counterintuitive in the context of conventional politics, the Perot campaign may have wanted to convey precisely that sober image. Like former Senator Paul E. Tsongas of Massachusetts in this year's Democratic primaries and former Gov. Bruce Babbitt of Arizona in 1988, Mr. Perot fancies himself as an Un-candidate, an outsider committed to prescribing bitter medicine in an unadorned package.

In his presentation, Mr. Perot flipped through one chart after the next, quantifying everything from the increase in the national debt to patterns of Federal spending to international gasoline prices. As he described each trend, Mr. Perot veritably sneered in disgust.

"We used to have the world's greatest economic engine," he said. "We let it slip away and with it went millions of jobs and taxpayers. Front-Runners Not Mentioned

By focusing on the country's economic ills, Mr. Perot may well have done Gov. Bill Clinton's bidding. But he never mentioned either President Bush or Mr. Clinton by name, choosing instead to emphasize the gridlock between the Republican President and the Democratic Congress.

"The American people are good," he said. "And yet over time we have created a country that's a mess. We have a situation in which our President blames Congress, Congress blames the President, the Democrats and Republicans blame each other. Nobody steps up to the plate and accepts responsibility for anything."

Mr. Perot also denounced the practice of government officials profiting from their political connections by becoming lobbyists, particularly for foreign countries. Although Mr. Perot did not mention names, several of President Bush's top campaign aides are lobbyists whose companies have contracts with foreign countries.

"This is like a general switching armies in the middle of a war," Mr. Perot said. "They should come to serve and go home, not cash in."

A version of this article appears in print on October 7, 1992, on Page A00016 of the National edition with the headline: THE 1992 CAMPAIGN: The Independent; Perot Charts Poor Economy in 30-Minute TV Talk. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe